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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27155095">Sun in My Eyes, Navy Blue Skies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone'>oneoneandone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Women's Soccer RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, One Shot Collection</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:14:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,198</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27155095</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Short stories (less than 1000 words) of Kelley and Emily and Lindsey.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kelley O'Hara/Emily Sonnett, Kelley O’Hara/Lindsey Horan, Lindsey Horan/Emily Sonnett, Lindsey Horan/Kelley O’Hara, Lindsey Horan/Kelley O’Hara/Emily Sonnett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Time to Her Beat</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They’re hurting, all three of them.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <b>Prompt</b>
  <br/>
  <i>some soft so'hara where sonnett is upset/sad/in her feelings after getting sent to the locker room on the red card and kelley comes to find her?</i>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s on her feet and heading for the locker-room before the call is even made over the loudspeaker.</p><p>// <em>Emily Sonnett, red card</em> // she hears the words echo off the thick concrete walls as she navigates to a locker-room similar to her own, but without the usual Utah insignias and colors.</p><p>Nobody notices her, or if they do, nobody says anything, nobody tries to stop her. And Kelley is glad, because even if her relationship isn’t exactly a secret? It’s not exactly open information either.</p><p>The visitor’s locker-room is empty as expected, another ten minutes plus stoppage time left in the match. And it’s not much, but it’s enough. Enough to check in on the woman she loves with all her heart.</p><p>There’s water running in the shower room behind the lockers and the trainer’s tables, and Kelley navigates around the duffle bags and discarded clothing, pausing at the entrance to the showers. There, sitting on a bench outside one of the stalls, her girlfriend sits, head in her hands.</p><p>And she recognizes the pose, the emotion there, flashing back to a game she’d thought meant everything at the time. The feeling of letting her teammates down, of being responsible for a loss where there should have been a triumph.</p><p>“Hey,” Kelley whispers, not wanting to startle the blonde, but she doesn’t step forward, doesn’t move closer until Emily looks up.</p><p>She’s never been a graceful crier, Emily. Kelley knows this, too, from experience. Her cheeks are red and the tracks of tears cut through the dust and dirt and sweat on her face. And there’s a look in her eyes—loss or disappointment or, self-loathing. A look that makes Kelley want to just gather her partner up in her arms and tell her over and over again how good, how loved, how precious she is.</p><p>But the game clock continues to tick down, and sooner enough the rooms will be full of post-game noise and activity.</p><p>Still, there are some things Kelley can do.</p><p>She steps into the shower room, crouching before Emily and begins to unlace the blonde’s cleats, pulling them off and  feeling Emily’s body relax a little as her feet are freed.</p><p>“Kel–” Emily whispers, sounding exhausted, defeated. But Kelley just leans forward to kiss her gently on the cheek. “Let me help,” she says softly, rolling the tall socks down her girlfriend’s legs.</p><p>The younger woman lets Kelley pull her up and undress her, leaning forward, her whole weight on Kelley as they stand for a moment in the warm quiet of the shower room.</p><p>“I think the water’s probably ready,” Kelley whispers as Emily pulls back a little, hearing the roar of the crowd echo into the locker-room to signal the end of the match, and Utah’s win. “I’m going to go out into the corridor and wait for you, okay?”</p><p>But before she leaves, she pulls Emily closer one more time, cupping her girlfriend’s face in her hands.</p><p>“I love you,” she whispers, pressing soft kisses over those perfect lips, and her heart lifts when Emily rewards her with just the hint of a smile.</p><p>“Go on,” the blonde whispers, “I won’t be long.”</p><p>The Portland players, sweaty and frustrated and angry, are just filtering into the locker-room as Kelley cuts through it toward the hall. And she does her best to be as invisible, as innocuous as possible.</p><p>But a hand catches hers just as she settles against the wall outside the locker-room to wait, and Kelley finds herself looking into Horan’s steely eyes.</p><p>There are no words, though. Just a nod–firm and approving. Grateful. And Kelley returns it, tightly squeezing the hand of the woman she knows loves her girlfriend just as much—and maybe more.</p><p>“Stay,” Horan asks, and turns to look toward where her teammates are, where Emily is, and Kelley nods in agreement.</p><p>“Go on,” she tells her, “I’ll wait here for both of you.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Dream Girl,” Jack River</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Take It Off</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She knows they’ll remember the dress.</p><p>She’s counting on it.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <b>Prompt</b>
  <br/>
  <i> “You know what that dress does to me,” Kelley x Lindsey x Emily</i>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lindsey sometimes looks at the two women in her life and has a hard time believing that this is her life, that she belongs to them. That they belong to her.</p><p>It’s an anniversary of sorts tonight. A year since she’d somehow fallen into this relationship, and Lindsey knows that the two women she loves will not let it pass by unacknowledged. And she knows she doesn’t want them to, to let it go without a mention.</p><p>Maybe the woman she used to be would have preferred that. Maybe. But not the woman she has become, the woman that Kelley and Emily have helped her to see within herself. A women comfortable in herself, in her skin. A woman comfortable in being loved.</p><p>Lindsey wants to celebrate this moment too, this milestone. A year of knowing that if she falls, four hands will catch her. That if she aches, whether for comfort or for release, two hearts will cover her, fill her, until she feels settled again.</p><p>A love like this, she hadn’t even known it could exist. And here she is, loving two women this deeply. Being loved by two women this completely in return.</p><p>Now that’s something to celebrate.</p><p>— — —</p><p>Lindsey waits for them, the hotel suite she’d reserved for the occasion. No explanation, no need. Just an address and a time. She knew they’d come. Knew they’d know the date, the reason.</p><p>And she isn’t disappointed. The lock disengages and the door opens and there they are, dark and light, the women who have taught her her worth in loving. Who have given her everything and asked for nothing in return. And maybe they were together first, maybe what they had together was older, stronger. But Lindsey knows this too—she’s the missing piece that makes them whole.</p><p>“About time,” she teases from the bed, eyes laughing as she drinks in the sight of them. “I was starting to think I should have sent you a map.”</p><p>And there it is, the crack of laughter, the sweet sound of Kelley’s chuckle merging so seamlessly with Emily’s deeper belly laughs. Fuck, she loves these women.</p><p>“Well,” Kelley says as she drops her bag to the floor, the door already safely closed and locked behind them, “aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” And she takes a long, lingering look at Lindsey there on the bed: the strong, bare legs; the deep crimson of the dress that hugs every curve, accentuates every angle; the way her hair is set in soft waves over her shoulders, framing her face, the dark color of her lips and the smoky shadows of her eyes.</p><p>“Sore eyes,” Emily untangles the strap of her bag from her shoulder, “like you haven’t been looking at me—oh, fuck me.” She stops, forgetting the way her carryon has become somehow inextricably linked with her backpack, and just stares, mouth falling open at the sight of Lindsey there. Waiting and so, so ready for them.</p><p>And Lindsey laughs, because she loves them both. Loves the way their brains sort of just trip over the image of her all sexed up before them. “That is kind of the plan,” she stretches out a leg, pointing her toes, Kelley just close enough that she can run a well-manicured nail down the inside of her thigh, nothing but the thin fabric of her travel leggings between them.</p><p>Her reward is a soft, low, groan, Kelley’s eyes fluttering shut for a moment as she imagines all the other places Lindsey will touch her soon enough. “That dress,” Emily croaks from behind, “is that—that’s not the same one. Not the same one from that night, right?”</p><p>But she knows it is, they both do. And Lindsey just smirks at them. Because she knows they do. “I thought you said we’d ruined it,” Kelley whispers, edging closer, and the younger woman wants to laugh again at the way her very smart, very astute girlfriends seem to lose access to the full complement of their faculties when she’s before them, dressed up and clearly doing her absolute best to seduce them into bed with her.</p><p>“Turns out,” she lets the words fall slowly, deliberately, from her painted mouth, drawing the tip of her tongue over her lower lip as she pauses, seeing their breath catch and hold, as if dependent upon her plans for them, “they invented this thing—dry cleaning, I think they call it?” And Lindsey sees it, the moment their patience snaps, the moment their want and their need override their instinct to control.</p><p>“Fuck, Linds,” Kelley is already drawing her shirt up her chest and off, letting it fall wherever it lands behind her, “you know what that dress does to me, to us.” And now she does laugh, because she does know, she remembers all too well.</p><p>“I do,” she holds out a hand for Emily to join them, to break her out of her spell and bring her to the bed where she knows they’ll end up in a pile of lips and limbs and love, “trust me, I do.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Dress,” Taylor Swift</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. A Ghost in the Garden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It was no one’s fault. </p><p>Now they’re all waiting on a second chance.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <b>Prompt</b>
  <br/>
  <i> soharan - “Just hold on. For me. Please.”</i>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It hadn’t been anyone’s fault.</p><p>That was the thing to remember.</p><p>It was a fluke, an accident. The kind of terrible thing that could happen to anyone.</p><p>The kind that was never supposed to happen to you.</p><p>Until it did. Until it did and everything changed.</p><p>— — —</p><p>Black ice. Two girls from the south. Three girls in a black SUV. An argument over who would drive.</p><p>It was Kelley who won the toss, grabbing the keys from Lindsey with a delighted cackle, the same they’d all heard over board game wins and races to the front door and those moments in bed when one of them suddenly lost the grip of control to the impish brunette. Kelley who won the toss and Emily who called shotgun and Lindsey who pouted in the back even as she laughed at their antics.</p><p>A cabin in the woods. No one else for miles. A long weekend of love and crackline fires and slow hikes through the winter white wonderland.</p><p>The deer appears out of nowhere, standing in the middle of the road like a portent of disaster, frozen in the lights of the oncoming vehicle. And it would have been fine, everything would have been fine. Except for the snow the day before and the falling temperature in the night. Virgin roads and winter ghosts.</p><p>They’re caught in a skid, caught in an eternal moment of time held still—until they aren’t. Until there’s nothing but the crunch of metal and the shattering of glass and the groan of wood bent almost to the point of breaking.</p><p>“Everyone okay?” Kelley asks as her spirit settles back into her body, heart racing, lungs burning, but mercifully, mercifully, okay.</p><p>And there’s an answer from Lindsey in the back, a groan not entirely free of pain, but there. Proof that despite the ache in her head and the burn of the seatbelt against her chest where it held her safe, she, too, has emerged relatively unscathed.</p><p>But there’s a deeper, darker silence then. The kind that only gets louder the longer it sits between them. And Kelley shifts, scrambling to undo her belt, to turn and make sure that the woman at her side is okay as well.</p><p>Except—</p><p>Except she’s not.</p><p>Except she’s not. And Kelley’s not sure any of them will ever be again.</p><p>— — —</p><p>“Just hold on, Em,” Kelley whispers as they wait, as Lindsey paces up the road with the flashlight from the roadside emergency kit Emily had always teased her about. “Just hold on, okay? For me. For us. Just hold on.”</p><p>— — —</p><p>She’ll never forget the sound—not of the crash that had almost taken Emily’s life, but of the machines that had cut into crumpled metal to free her. The jaws of life, wrenching and pulling and prying until Emily could be freed, pulled from the wreckage of the car, and rushed into a waiting ambulance, red and blue lights burning into their eyes as they watched it disappear in the distance, anti-shock blankets wrapped around their shoulders.</p><p>And she knows, she wasn’t the only one certain they’d never see the woman they loved again.</p><p>“She’s going to be okay,” Lindsey whispers against her jaw where they sit, huddled together in a single chair, aside Emily’s bed. Lindsey’s got a sharp line of stitches across her temple, and she grimaces with every breath too deep for her bruised and broken ribs. And Kelley’s no better, wrist encased in a hard club of a cast, vision still a little blurry. But none of that matters.</p><p>None of that matters.</p><p>Not while they’re still waiting for Emily.</p><p>“You heard what they said,” Lindsey whispers again, trying to soothe the guilty ache in the older woman’s chest, “she could have died, but she didn’t. She held on. For you. For us.”</p><p>And Kelley nods.</p><p>But she won’t let herself believe it.</p><p>Not until Emily wakes.</p><p>Not until she can tell her everything—tell both of them everything—that she’d regretted not saying in those split seconds when the world held still.</p><p>She’ll believe it when Emily opens her eyes.</p><p>When their second chance begins.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Second Chances,” Gregory Alan Isakov</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>“This is How You Fall in Love,” Jeremy Zucker &amp; Chelsea Cutler</p></blockquote></div></div>
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